Friday, April 23, 2010

Audio in the Cockpit

I have aways had trouble with recognizing expired timers in the cockpit. Timed approaches, arghhhhh.

I have often wondered why we don't see more integration with timers and audio in the cockpit. Just think about that ILS and the audio (male or female) saying your timer has just expired.

Or how about "time to switch tanks honey" (voice is opposite sex, of course!). Just think about how many tank switches you have screwed up as a pilot (I cannot count). It's not easy to remember to look at the clock which is often located out of the main viewing area of the pilot. Even a yoke mounted kitchen timer doesn't work in a noisy cockpit unless it has a light and it is night time. There has to be a better way!

Modern FMSs have a timer feature, but even then, an expiration message shows up as a visual somewhere you are guaranteed to not be looking when it occurs.

Yes, there are some technical issues like how to handle a coinciding call from ATC, but I am sure that there are solutions. Audio stream mixing at this point would be good. Perhaps one timer's audio can be "critical" and used in situations like timed approaches. Critical time expiration messages would be mixed with ATC voice, perhaps a few "TIMER! TIMER!" shouts or something like that. All other expiration messages can perhaps be deferred until after ATC finishes their voice transmission. A tank switch would be in this category. In other words, non-critical times are deferred in the event of a collision with incoming ATC messages and a critical time expiration message is mixed with the ATC input.

It's about time we quit missing time expiration messages and audio seems like the best way to solve this problem.